Saturday, July 6, 2013

Rosh Hanikra

We went to Rosh Hanikra a few weekends ago. I had been wanting to go because it has some really awesome cave grottoes, and it was even more awesome than I thought it would be. We can see the white cliffs of Rosh Hanikra from our apartment in Haifa even on less than super-clear days, and we were there on a very clear day so we could see back to Haifa, which is about 20 miles away. The land that you can see along the horizon is Haifa in this picture:

Rosh Hanikra is the farthest north town in Israel, on the border with Lebanon. Here is a map of the place. That tower that you see on top of the photo might actually be in Lebanon:

We took a cable car to get down to the grottoes, which was quite fun:

The view out the front of the cable car was really nice:

So was the view out the side:

When we got out of the cable car at the bottom, we were at the entrance to the grottoes:

The whole place is extremely beautiful, right on the water:

Here is Sam entering the grotto:

A magical view:

Here we are in the grotto:

Oh, it was so gorgeous!!! Look:

Doesn't it just make you want to go there? It was so amazing. Here is a hole that was made by the erosion of the water over probably millions of years. The water flows in and out of this hole, and for some reason it reminded me of Jonah and the whale:

Another beautiful view:

Outside of the grottoes are these beautiful white rock cliffs. Here is Sam in front of one of them:

So blue! I love this:

On the left here you can see the entrance to the grottoes:

Around that point of land is Lebanon:

During WWI (maybe?) there were tunnels built that were intended to connect Europe and the Middle East by train. At some point, the tunnels were bombed to disrupt the trains, but there are still some of the tunnel areas intact:

More grotto - look at the color of the water:

We also saw a Navy ship out in the distance. This picture isn't so great because I zoomed in on my camera phone: